One example is the eight-hour-long Memory II: Hunger, staged at the Singapore Arts Festival in 2011 by Beijing’s Living Dance Studio. The film and live performance told the stories of survivors of China's Great Famine (1959-1961), the outcome of both government mismanagement and natural disaster.
The audience was encouraged to fast the night before the show, and the delay of meals, coupled with the length of the production, dramatically heightened one’s sense of the performance. The audience was also invited to break their fast by sharing a meal with the actors at the end of the show.
The palpable presence of the audience in a durational performance is what sets it apart from work performed by artists over a period, but without an audience in attendance.
Examples of the latter include the largely static and plotless eight-hour, black-and-white silent film of the Empire State building by Andy Warhol in 1964, consumed by an audience after the film was made, and One Year Performance (1980-1981) by Tehching Hsieh, where for a year, he punched a time clock every hour on the hour and took a single picture of the moment, without an audience on the spot. Then there is Relation in Time (1977) by Marina Abramovic where she sat back-to-back with another artist, Ulay, for 16 hours in a studio in Italy, with their ponytails tied together, and visitors were allowed to witness them only in the 17th and final hour.
Durational performance, in fact, has roots in marathon cycles of dramatic work linked to ritual and communal expression, including the day-long performances of ancient Greek tragedy, Japanese kabuki, and the multi-day performance of ramlila, a dramatic folk re-enactment of the Hindu epic Ramayana. The durational quality of these performances was a response to the milieu in which they arose, and they offered an escape from the humdrum of the day-to-day.
Durational performance continues to occupy a place in society, and it is perhaps more urgent now than before, given the cult of speed that has taken hold of contemporary life. Such works invite reflection on how we spend the hours, days, and years of our lives, and equally, prompt meditation on living in the moment and seizing it.
